This
play and
production work so hard to impress you that they just might alienate
you instead. But stop resisting and just let yourself be carried
along, and you'll find much to appreciate and enjoy.

Written
(book,
music and lyrics) by Anais Mitchell and developed from its original
incarnation as a concept album with director Rachel Chavkin,
and brought almost bodily from previous runs in the USA and Canada,
Hadestown is the Orpheus-Eurydice story (She is tempted into Hell, he
has to rescue her) in modern dress.

The
Underworld is a company town
somewhere in the American South, with Hades as mayor, political boss
and owner of the oppressive factory, Persephone as his bored wife,
the Fates as local gossips, and both Eurydice and Orpheus as
guileless youths. The frame is a kind of honkytonk jazz club with
Hermes as host and narrator.

Eurydice
is lured by Hades' seductive
promises and Orpheus, encouraged by a sympathetic Persephone, must
win her back by using his music to remind Hades of the value and
power of love.

The
whole is told through a cycle of songs with
country, folk and jazz overtones; through choreography by David
Neumann, largely involving the chorus of Hades' oppressed workers;
and by considerable employment of the Olivier's rising, falling and
turning stage machinery.

Though
not always particularly memorable in
themselves, the songs have a cumulative effectiveness in giving the
story operatic weight and in defining the characters.

Patrick
Page's
growling basso establishes Hades' authority, power and dangerousness,
while Amber Gray as Persephone frequently steals her scenes with
sex-saturated blues numbers that make it clear she is her own
woman.

Hermes'
narrative songs have a knowing quality that hints at the
darkest tones the story will eventually take, and Andre De Shields
sings them with just enough of a hint of false show-biz cheeriness to
make them seem particularly sinister.

Almost
predictably, the
romantic leads are the blandest characterisations, given the most
conventional and anodyne songs.

Eva
Noblezada captures the innocence
and vulnerability of a Eurydice always completely out of her depth,
but Reeve Carney can't really do much with an Orpheus written as
little more than a generic college kid with a guitar.

Hadestown
is
not quite as original and innovative as it thinks it is, and one
thing that could get in the way of your enjoyment is the temptation
to footnote influences or previously-encountered versions of one
effect or another.

Mitchell's
songs occasionally hint at Jim Steinman
(by which I suppose I mean they're grandiose – though, like
Steinman, she generally pulls it off), while David Neumann's
choreography recalls the assertive masculinity of Tap Dogs.

But
Hadestown's strengths more than outweigh its weaknesses, and the
conscious decision to ignore the latter is not difficult to make, and
is well rewarded.